<p>OMG. The reason why colleges have fewer men is because fewer men enroll in college than females. Duh!</p>
<p>Best estimates are that about 2% of males and 1.5% of females are gay. And 57% of incoming college frosh are female.</p>
<p>So that means the AVERAGE college these days will be 57% female (with 1% being lesbian) and 43% male (1% of whom will be gay). So the straight ratio is like 56% to 42%. </p>
<p>But feel free to go ahead and talk about tired stereotypes like dance and art programs that have nothing to do with what is a very broad social phenomena. Which is that boys don’t go to college as much as girls.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is a big concern if you are in a major metro area. I went to a school that was 100% women, and I met plenty of guys for socializing.</p>
<p>However, if the school is more remote or rural, I could see it being more challenging socially. Although I think individual behavior might have more to do with how much socializing goes on - - popular, extroverted people in high school probably will do fine regardless of the ratio.</p>
<p>My younger son and I just toured Tulane, and I was very surprised at the ratio on the tour. There were about thirty young women and only four young men. Two of the young men showed up late, so I thought it was even worse initially. It didn’t bother my son at all, lol. But even though I know more women than men are going to college, I guess I didn’t expect to see the skew in the top tiers of schools. Of course, it was only one data point, but the ratio of female to male is disproportionate there as well.</p>
<p>More men do find well paying jobs with only a high school diploma than women do, however they also may find that they’ve hit the top of the ladder/ Payscale in a much shorter time than anticipated.</p>
<p>Don’t take that tone with me, young man. At least part of the conversation is about why the ratio differs between different colleges, so of course the subject offerings might be relevant.</p>
<p>Where did you get those numbers about gay men and women, by the way?</p>
<p>My feeling is that the “artsy” schools, the ones that attract gay men, also attract plenty of gay women. So even though the F/M ratios are a bit lopsided, they aren’t ridiculously skewed.</p>
<p>“My younger son and I just toured Tulane, and I was very surprised at the ratio on the tour.”</p>
<p>Tulane (a geat school by the way) is about 40/60 enrollment. They scaled back their engineering program in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but are now in the process of trying to expand/rebuild some of their STEM programs. Also, they are a big time merit aid school, so they are focused on getting the highest admission stats they possibly can. That means the merit money tends to get directed more at the girls. The merit aid model does not co-exist so well with pro-male affirmative action (like how the Ivies do it).</p>
<p>These days a private college without much engineering and a lot of merit aid is going to trend heavily female.</p>
<p>Northwesty understood what I was trying to say - Penn State has a more even ratio - closer to 50/50, and indeed, slightly slanted toward men. I’m sure the engineering program has a lot to do with that. Which makes sense, because the smaller PA state schools with 60% women don’t offer engineering.</p>
<p>So interesting, northwesty, about the engineering playing such a big role. We loved our visit. I guess I expected boys and girls to be more equally attracted to Tulane, but perhaps fewer being admitted. But maybe the word of mouth and lack of engineering reflects itself in who visits as well.</p>
<p>MD Mom – as I noted above, 40/60 these days is actually about the average enrollment of a college. So Tulane (where my kid goes and loves it) is actually pretty typical. There’s only two ways a school gets to 50/50 these days. One is through big STEM programs. The other is by practicing affirmative action for boys. The Ivies and other highly selective schools dial back on SATs and GPAs a bit in order to enroll more boys. Not a big deal to them because the admissions stats are still extremely high. Just not quite as high as the would be if they were 40/60 rather than 50/50.</p>
<p>“If women-heavy schools seem to have more gay men, it may be due to other features about the schools besides the gender ratio (e.g. academic majors offered, social scene, etc. at each particular school).”</p>
<p>Right. Gay men’s college preferences skew in some ways that match women’s college preferences.</p>
<p>“And 57% of incoming college frosh are female.”</p>
<p>Not true of the population applying to highly selective colleges, which includes more or less everyone who uses CC. The pool of 1200+ scorers (M+CR) does not skew female the way the larger college-bound pool does.</p>
<p>A lot of colleges with higher percentage of women than men might have been women’s colleges at one time, and the majors there would likely have been in the more traditional female arenas, such as the arts, communication, nursing, literature, library science, etc. This might be a factor. — Two cents. </p>
<p>Re: Loyola Chicago. Might the ratio above be including the graduate students? </p>
<p>Son taught us a new word this weekend when he was home. “pansexual” meaning someone who is open to men, women and transgender individuals … just thought I’d share that. Pretty cool I guess.</p>
<p>"At what point does this have a noticeable impact on social life? "</p>
<p>DS goes to Georgia Tech where the ratio is about 33% female to 67% male. While I was concerned to begin with I figured that Atlanta is a good size city. The saying at GT for women is the odds are good but the goods are odd. I don’t know how true that is but DS does have a nice GT Girlfriend. Just because a school has more of one gender than the other doesn’t necessarily mean they all want to date someone. Plus Chicago is a big city with lots of single people. I wouldn’t count Loyola out because of the gender ratio. BTW DH got his MBA at Loyola- Chicago and it has served him well.</p>